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About GiftCraft

Giftcraft is a leading importer and distributor of consumer goods in North America.  As a company that imports many home and garden products from various countries around the world, it then distributes the latest products to its 1000 plus list of retailers.

Website Requirements

Based in Toronto, Canada, Giftcraft wanted a web site that appealed to people across North America.  The goal of the site was to provide a creative brand that showcased the different product lines being offered by the company.  The site was to focus on strong product imagery and there were no search engine optimization considerations for this project.  Instead the site was to appeal to the 1000+ retail outlets that purchase product from Giftcraft.

Some of the key web development requirements included:

• Dynamic homepage which could be replaced by a site administrator to match the different seasons and product lines offered at the company.
• Ability to change the bottom navigation and icons to match the chosen imagery color on the homepage and have it replicate site wide.
• A dynamic 'retail store locator' that would allow consumers the ability to find a store that offers Giftcraft product locally.  The feature would offer search by Country, State/Province and City.  It would also feature address information, phone number, and a link to a Google Map.
• Ability to dynamically add 'featured' artists' showcasing the biography of the artists that work at Giftcraft.
• These 'featured' artists could also have product lines associated to their own profile.
• A photo gallery which the administrator could add categories and associate to.
• Search functionality allows the site visitor to search and view photos from the gallery.
• Produce a news and events section that allowed the site admin to update recent news without having to contact the web development company. 

Results

In most web development projects the more control you give the administrator of content the more likely the site will end up having a more amateur appeal.  The website strategy team was very careful to build a site that gave the administrator the control needed while making it difficult to control things like content that could cause title and content to become inconsistent.

Some particular developments that we were proud of with this project:

• The retailer locator was built with an easy to operate admin area.  The visitor search experience is lightning fast and produces accurate results.
• The admin is able to easily add a homepage image which can be previewed in the back end before launching.  The admin is then able to toggle between a historic account of all images used and can easily change the navigation color to over 15 different options.
• AJAX was used in the Product Gallery which allows visitors to quickly enlarge all images and move them around for better clarity.
• We integrated a full office tour by converting offline footage into FLASH.
• The news and events section allows the admin to update a title, description and photo to accompany the news release.

For TechWyse this was a fun website.  Both Giftcraft and our web team held frequent meetings at our Toronto area location to ensure project success. We do not often work on web site projects that do not have search engine optimization as the primary goal of site success.  The site produced was of high quality and maximum administrative control.